Looking from Canada to the United States, across Niagara's Horseshoe Falls

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Liberal Allan Rock: free-speech poser

The National Post's July 3, 2010 editorial, "The real censor at U of Ottawa" plainly revealed the smarmy smug scumbag (typical Liberal, eh?) which Allan Rock has shown himself to be:

"Last March, when controversial American conservative pundit Ann Coulter first proposed to speak on the University of Ottawa campus, the school's vice-president academic and provost, Francois Houle, sent an infamouslysmug, patronizing letter to Ms. Coulter, warning her to "educate" herself about what kinds of speech are and are not acceptable in Canada "before your planned visit here."

He added a thinly veiled threat that "promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges." To avoid arrest or a lawsuit, he cautioned ominously, "weigh your words with respect and civility in mind."

Now, thanks to an access to information request by The Canadian Press (CP), we have learned that U of O president Allan Rock, the former federal Liberal Justice minister -- not Mr. Houle -- was the force behind the intimidating email to Ms. Coulter.

The CP reports that the day before Mr. Houle's message was sent to Ms. Coulter, Mr. Rock sent his own message to Mr. Houle instructing him to warn her of the potential for legal action should she go ahead with her planned address. In a classic example of the pot calling the kettle black, Mr. Rock wrote that "Ann Coulter is a mean-spirited, small-minded, foulmouthed poltroon ... 'the loud mouth that bespeaks the vacant mind.' She is an ill-informed and deeply offensive shill for a profoundly shallow and ignorant view of the world. She is a malignancy on the body politic. She is a disgrace to the broadcasting industry and a leading example of the dramatic decline in the quality of public discourse in recent times."

A firestorm followed the release of Mr. Houle's sneering email. He received hundreds of angry, often vicious emails. Dozens of newspapers, this one included, wondered about his fitness for the job a leading a university, which is supposed to be a sanctuary for free inquiry, not a shrine for the worship of political correctness.

Not once during the maelstrom heaped upon Mr. Houle did Mr. Rock step up and admit he was actually the person behind his vice-president's correspondence. Indeed, the emails obtained by CP indicate that after criticism of the provost's letter heated up, Mr. Rock -- who as Justice minister for Jean Chretien was responsible for such controversial legislation as the gun registry and divorce laws that force men to pay tax on the child support they send their ex-wives -- considered making a public offer to Ms. Coulter to return to the university and speak. Such a move would have been self-serving, making Mr. Rock look like the defender of free speech, even though it was him all along who wanted to "chill" Ms. Coulter's remarks.

Mr. Rock was not the only one hoping to intimidate the controversial writer into moving her speech off campus. Mr. Rock seems to have been acting on the request of Seamus Wolfe, Ottawa's student federation president, who had posters for the Coulter event removed from student union property and who wrote to Mr. Rock urging that "you notify Ms. Coulter that she is not welcome on our campus, and that her event will not occur on uOttawa property."

Of course, Messrs. Rock, Houle and Wolfe all would see themselves as champions of free expression, which highlights the danger posed by of hate-speech laws: They give intellectual cover to censorship by permitting politically correct persons simply to define any speech with which they happen to disagree as "hate speech."

In this regards, perhaps most troubling was Mr. Rock's instruction to Mr. Houle that the latter urge Ms. Coulter "to respect that Canadian tradition" of free speech "as she enjoys the privilege of her visit."

Free speech is a right, not a privilege. The right to speak one's mind did not descend from government or a university official. The world "privilege" implies a freedom that can be taken away at the pleasure of those in power or on the bench. By their nature, privileges cannot be bulwarks against the abuse of power.

For a former head of the Law Society of Upper Canada to have such a false concept of fundamental political rights is appalling. Indeed, it casts doubt on his ability to lead a university."

(...see also the National Post's Mar.24, 2010 report here, after Coulter was successfully censored by the politically-correct leftists at the University of Ottawa, and where NO MENTION was made - because it was not yet known - of Allan Rock's secretive Liberal influence in this whole sordid mess.)

What a FLICKING Liberal wimp - now we see that Alan Rock had to use a proxy, provost Francoise Houle, to act as his Smug Censor Agent, while Rock hid in the background.

In fact, it could very well be said that:Liberal cretin Allan Rock, a Chretienite leftist hack, a disastrous former Justice Minister and useless Health Minister, is a mean-spirited, small-minded, foul-intentioned, duplicitous ponce; a loud-mouth that bespeaks his vacant mind - by using other agents as his surreptitious pawns, of course. Rock is an ill-informed and deeply offensive shill for the disgusting and profoundly shallow partisan Liberal view of the world. Rock and his political Liberal scumbag associates and colleagues are a malignancy on Canada's - and the West's - body politic. Rock is a free-speech hypocrite, a disgrace to Canada's Parliament, and a disgrace as the president, no less, of the university in Canada's capital. Rock exemplifies the deceptive and manipulative characteristics that define the smug elitism known as Liberalism. It is these kind of Allan Rocks who still manipulate and pull strings from their well-cushioned Liberal-friendly snake-pits in academia, who are loathed by Canadians, and who have helped cause the dramatic decline in the respect for the institution of Parliament.